You Jump, I Jump - Remember?
by LackingLucidity
Summary: Cat didn't think there was a single thing that could keep a person from hurting, not even nice things. Some of the loveliest things Cat had ever experienced were also the reason she dreamt of standing on tall bridges, staring down at the water below and wondering what it would be like to swim. * One shot * Potential trigger *


The warm glow of the evening quickly faded into streaks of blues and greys, almost as if just like her, the emptiness of the night has been drained of all its temporary happiness.

Cat let her feet carry her through the dully illuminated streets, streets so washed out and glum they reminded her of the sick. She thought it was kind of ironic and smiled, because maybe she belonged there. Smothered by the overwhelming smell of damp and urine, she walked along the cold pavement, kicking dirty beer cans and cigarette butts soaked through with rain and covered in grit.

Cat recognised the thought that she had probably never felt so worthless in her life, scraping her feet along the sidewalk, but maybe her peak of loneliness was just a parallel of how she's always been but refused to acknowledge. For a moment she wondered if she felt so useless because she'd grown so used to company for the first time, that maybe she had momentarily forgotten about the feeling of discontentment for her life.

Sometimes Cat wished she could've felt alive like she had in those brief two-months for a little longer, but she hadn't been too upset, because two months of feeling good has a funny way of feeling like forever when you've been clinically depressed for eight years.

The feeling of loss, which ran alongside the numbness of her heart. She forgot about it sometimes, depression, but Cat was smart. She understood that eventually you stop viewing yourself as having an illness because that illness just becomes you. So when people asked, she smiled and said no, I'm just Cat, and she was okay with being Cat because the thought of being anyone else scared her, being happy would scare her.

Cat felt a surreal familiarisation to that loneliness as she sat on the freezed, damp concrete, a bitter chill passing straight through her clothes and gnawed at her hollow bones. And it was comfortable. Cat sometimes had preferred being alone because the alternative meant Jade, and the fuzziness that clouded her brain in her presence always seemed to knock her off balance. Most times she liked it.

Goosebumps prickled hairs upright across Cat's skin, the drizzle of rain making her shiver under the thin layer of clothing she wore. Cat felt almost crazy when she was swallowed by a horrendous desire to dance in the puddles she spotted across the street, reflecting the gloomy oranges from the flickering streetlamps. Instead, she watched the patterns the rain as they gracefully fleeted across the tiny pools of water, fascinated by how something so completely normal can be so beautiful.

But she supposed that anything can be beautiful no matter how average they are or look, because despite how boringly average Cat was, Jade had told her she was breathtaking once.

When the numbness of the weather starts to ache her body, Cat stood, the wonder of whether or not she would feel embarrassed if Jade was there to see the wet patch on the back of the jeans present on her mind. At the thought, Cat felt her heart pick up and her throat dry, but her last thread of rationality held her together, reminding her that Jade wasn't there nor had been for a while. So she patted the cloth which covered her heart, shushing it, because there was really no need to be so nervous.

She had plenty of reason to be nervous though, she was on her way to see Jade. She wouldn't have been so anxious if she had known whether or not Jade wanted to see her, but Cat needed Jade. She really, really needed to see Jade.

As she walked with a skip in her step, passing by broken houses with smashed windows and abandoned cars with clamps encasing their tires, keeping them grounded like the therapists try to keep Cat down, stable, medicated, she wondered if the buildings had stories. If they had families they once captivated, kept safe.

But with shattered windows and clamped cars, how safe could they really have been? How safe can anything be? Cat didn't think there was a single that could keep a person from hurting, not even nice things, happy things. Some of the most loveliest things Cat had ever experienced were also the reason she dreamt of standing on tall bridges, staring down at the water below wondering what it would be like to swim.

Her hair was stuck to her face and her vision was bleak, but she noticed herself in a reflection on the ground, in a puddle of honesty, so she stared upon the hopelessness and the desperation she found brimming in the coffee coloured eyes she gazed into.

She held her watch on the girl, believing she looked miserable. She almost reached down to touch the girl's sad face, but remembered the girl in the water was her. She crouched anyway to get a closer look, because she could, only for the density of the rain to thicken and dishevel her reflection, beating down, down, down.

The person she saw in the puddle didn't look sad anymore, she didn't look like anything. Cat wasn't sure why she smacked the water then, but she regretted it as soon as she did. Cat scolded herself for not remembering to take her prescription that morning, because when the water stilled she found herself looking into a dirty puddle that looked a lot like Jade West on its shiny surface.

Cat laughed softly, because she knew that it wasn't normal. She should've been used to the way her mind twisted things, screwed things up. But soon the laughter subsided into a devastating sense of fear and she started to panic, sob, frantically wishing she'd never stopped walking.

Between the heavy rain beating down on Cat's back and the tears that welled up in her eyes, Cat found it hard to think straight, see straight, but she was sure that they're right - the doctors - she was going crazy. The reflection of Jade, if Cat could call it that, smiled, but Cat knew that it wasn't real, she knew that. She knew that it was getting worse.

If she had told her doctors maybe they could have saved her. But if she wanted to be saved she would've told them about everything, seeing Jade smile, feeling Jade's fingers tracing along her skin like feathers, Jade's raspy voice whispering into her ears. She didn't want the voice to stop, didn't want the reality to shatter her illusion. But soon, Cat had reminded herself. Soon Jade would be her reality.

Cat blinked, but the reflected eyes remained scarily empty, devoid of anything that would suggest that this person existed, felt, breathed. Cat struggled to remember why Jades's eyes were her favourite. Cat tried to imagine the happiest Jade had ever been but she couldn't, maybe because even with a mental instability like Cat's it was still too fucking messed up to concentrate on or visualise anything other than the hallucinations she was experiencing in touching distance.

Happiness with Jade didn't sprawl across her face like it did with other people, normal people, so Cat could never tell. Cat used to rely on messy smiles, throaty laughs, and bright eyes as an indication of joy, but Jade never did those things, her smile never reached her eyes. So Cat sighed, eyes stung with emotion, because for the life of her she couldn't pin down a moment of complete clarity with Jade. Everything was so jumbled.

Cat sucked in a shaky breath, pained, but she clung onto the shred of hope that just because she couldn't depicter things well doesn't mean Jade's spirits were always low. In fact, she knew they weren't. Were they?

But then Cat was back to insecurity, because Jade's happiness - as rare as it was - wasn't as sick and twisted as hers; Cat smiled when puppies were sick and babies cried. But Cat stopped telling people that because they thought she was crazy for surfacing such morbid thoughts, and the higher dosages of medication made her brain shake and she didn't like feeling so out of control.

So she never told people she liked sick puppies because she knew they'd be receiving more cuddles and kisses than ever, and she didn't explain that she liked when babies cried because she knew that babies who cried were healthy enough to do so, since her little sister wasn't. And Cat thought it was okay because at least Jade understood, and that had been enough for her.

Jade made her feel like a sad little puppy sometimes, one that she was just trying to comfort after being left tied outside to a pole for an hour. Whispered words like, "you're okay now, I'm here," when things were desperate; and Jade kissed her, just like that. She would do it so gently, so carefully - like Cat was delicate china and she was Jade's favourite set - that Cat barely felt anything. Until she felt everything.

Cat could still feel it so vividly. The soft touch of Jade's lips, Jade's hand trailing down her neck, brushing over collarbones. The pad of her thumb caressing her pulse point, gliding across her skin. For a moment, pill deprived and emotional overdrive, it feels so real that Cat could swear Jade was right there in front of her, and she could hear it, her voice.

Cat clamped her eyes shut, her breath spiralling from her mouth in short, hard bursts. The sound of the rain was drowned out by the voice of memory, mumbling things like, 'you have nice lips,' or 'you're the only person who doesn't kiss me like I'm worthless.'

She pried her eyes open in false hope, and Cat's heart dropped when she was met with an empty, scatty-looking building ahead of her. Deep down, she knew she hadn't really expected to see Jade as she tore her eyes open, but she knows, she heard her, felt her, somewhere Jade had to be real. Despite the doubt, the realisation still hurt her all the same, and she wanted to cry, rip out her hair, so badly. But Jade always told her that was weak.

A bitter part of Cat scoffed at the thought. Jade was a hypocrite. If it was weak to cry it was weak to leave, disappear without word, without Cat.

Cat was struck with another wave of grief, crippling her heart. She frantically scrambled away from the water only to trip and fall to the ground, grazing her hands. The dull ache pulsing her palms she was able to ignore, but as she looked up, vision flooded with the build up of fresh tears, the girl stood a few metres away from her, she couldn't.

"No," Cat whispered, as her hands shot up to her eyes, desperately trying to rub the girl from sight. Only, when Cat opened them again and glanced up sceptically, she was still there. "No."

"Cat," the girl rasped, "please, look at me."

"No, no, please… p-please, you're gone, you left. You're no-t real," Cat cried, sobbing into her hands. "You're not re-real, the doctors-no."

Hot streams of sadness coursed down her face mingling with the rain, her racking sobs lost in the derelict cold. Running her fingers up along her scalp, she tugged at the roots of her matted hair, clenching it between her fingers. "Jade, please," she whispered, hopeless. She was sure she was mental then, just like everyone had said. "You're dead."

"I'm right here, Cat, touch me."

"Y-you died, Jade… I saw your g-grave, I saw-"

"Shh, it's okay."

Cat briefly thought of her little sister when she finally looked up at met Jade's eyes. Jade's eyes never showed much of anything, but Cat used to observe the way the colours changed. When Cat saw Jade last, just three days because she was found killed laying at the bottom of a river, her eyes her the purest of blue, pale in comparison to her red, puffy cheeks. Cat should've noticed the transition sooner, maybe Jade wouldn't have gone through with it if she just listened to the stories Jade's eyes told. Just like her sister's.

Cat wondered if her sister would've been proud of who she became.

Cat shivered in disbelief as she stood from the ground, edging closer to the girl she was sure she was imagining. She wondered if she'd created Jade in her head, made up the harsh, hard-faced brunette, made up her story, made up the day they met when Cat ended up hospitalising herself. Again. What if she made up their time together? Cat couldn't handle the thought of her head screwing her over again. Too far, she thought. Too fucking far.

"Jadey?" She called out, apprehensively - petrified of trusting her own eyes. They'd send her back to hospital for this, she thought, they'd have her reassessed.

"Yeah, Cat?" Jade whispered, shuffling a little closer to the shaking girl she adored.

"You're… You exist, don't you?" Cat slurred, terrified, "You.."

Jade smiled softly, but it didn't reach her eyes. "Yeah, I exist."

"I mean, you… You were a person? We were real?"

"Of course," Jade confirmed.

Cat observed the dark grey that danced upon Jade's irises, and what Cat thought to be the very last drop of happiness that had remained since the last time they spoke had been consumed. Jade's eyes looked about as devastated as she felt, but beautiful, so, so beautiful.

"I was coming to visit you, Jade," Cat stuttered, attempting to restrain from drifting back into what's real, a place where Jade was dead, buried 6ft underground. "I was, I promise."

"I know."

"You knew? Is that… I see you, Jade, but you're not real." Cat sobbed, "I see you and I can feel you," Cat said, lifting her fingers up to Jade's face, rattled with nerves. "God," Cat gasped, her voice hoarse, "I can touch you, you're right here, warm and soft. Jade, how can you be here? You… you died, you-"

"Hey, shh. Don't cry over this, Cat. It doesn't matter anymore, alright?" Jade breathed, covering Cat's hand which cupped her cheek. "You were coming, Cat, right? You were?"

"Yes," Cat said, breathlessly.

Jade nodded, encouraging, "Why? You were coming, but why? Do you remember, Cat?"

Cat nodded, "I promised. We made a promise."

The girl in Cat's eyes nodded, and Cat wondered why her skin felt so warm on hers when it had been raining. She bit her lip.

"You remembered." The grey-eyed girl said, a tone of adoration and surprise in her husky tone.

Cat glanced soundlessly around the road she was on, her eyes flicked between the abandoned cars and derelict houses, a littered mess. Their starkness and their immutability made Cat realise that this place would always be here, long after she was only a memory - harbouring her last few hours as a depressed, semi-suicidal nobody. The thought of leaving everything behind - like those families had left behind their old lives, their homes - made her feel numb.

Jade's humming turned Cat's attention back to what was important. She swallowed thickly. "I've missed you, so, so much. You wouldn't - I just, I couldn't…"

Jade smiled. Cat didn't know whether or not it was true. She was sceptical, a part of her had been telling her that it was a lie, a ploy to send her back the place of stark white walls, the taste of anti-septic fluid on her tongue when she'd mindlessly chew on her nails after rubbing the liquid onto her hands. She didn't, no - couldn't go back there.

Cat's anxiousness hadn't alarmed Jade, it seemed, but that was probably because Cat didn't want her to be - she was a product of Cat's imagination, after all. In Cat's mind Jade's harsh glares were soft, her angry tone was hushed. Jade didn't treat Cat like she was crazy, in Cat's head, didn't treat her like she couldn't remain lucid for more than an hour a day, didn't treat her like she had to pop twenty pills just to keep her stable.

But Jade was those things; harsh, imbalanced, and angry. Cat knew Jade did things to get money, illegal things, things her mom had told her were bad. But Cat had never cared, never cared that Jade's tights were always ripped, her make-up clumped under her eyes. Cat cared about Jade's health, cared that those men would never treat Jade the way she deserved to be treated, like Cat would treat her.

But Jade refused to talk about it so Cat suffered in silence, because even though Jade slept with men with no names, fake names, Cat still loved her all the same.

"I missed you, too." Jade said, and Cat just clutched Jade's shirt, desperate for Jade to be real. "Come on, we have somewhere to be."

Cat entwined their fingers. "Okay."

Cat had never liked climbing, climbing was dangerous. Sometimes in her mind she'd climbed so high she got stuck, the only escape was to jump. Cat had done it before, tried to fall. But when she took the leap, one foot over the edge, her sister flooded her mind and she choked, too weak to pull through and save herself from her torment.

But this time Cat felt relaxed, at ease, free. Jade was there to help her, hold her hand and soften the fall. Cat braced herself and pushed herself up onto the ridge, the rusted blue metal bars slippery and wet under her fingertips.

Cat exhaled slowly. "Climb over the railing, don't look down." She repeated to herself. "Climb over the railing, don't look down. Railing, don't look down." Cat felt her hands sweat.

"I'm here,"Jade said, softly.

Cat nodded.

She hitched her leg over the steel bar, wearily, trying her best to keep her balance. Then she started laughing. "It's ironic, isn't it?" She chuckled. "Silly. I wouldn't matter if I lost my balance, really, would it? The drop is 200 meters, when I fall doesn't matter."

Fake-Jade looked concerned.

"Will it be like flying? Like a little bird, pretty little birds. You thought I was pretty, didn't you? You said I was beautiful once. You were breathing then. Why did you do it? I love you, I really loved you Jade, but you… you died. My sister died once, you know. I was sad. They put me inside and took all my things away. They gave me pills." A giggle bubbled through Cat's lips.

"They made me fly, but not like this, it was bad flying, Jade. You never let me tell you before. You said it wasn't something we were allowed to talk about. But you died, didn't you? We can talk now. Maybe we can talk after too, when we're together. Really together." Jade stared straight through her.

A sob ripped through Cat's throat. "I'm so angry Jade. I'm so angry. I killed her, didn't I? I should've done more, I could've helped her more. I watched her die. I watched my little sister die. Why did I do that, Jadey? Why would I do such a thing?" Cat cried manically, before she hiked her other leg over the bar. Jade followed.

"No one deserves to die, Jade, but I do."

Jade swallowed. Cat thought she looked sad.

Furiously wiping away the tears under her eyes, Cat took another breath and slowly, unwrapped her fingers from the bars behind her. Cat glanced at Jade.

"You jump, I jump. Remember?"

When Cat looked at Jade for the last time she saw sad eyes and a tired heart, so she looked away and stared down below her to keep it off her mind.

The moonlit illuminated the water beautifully, and it was just like her dreams, her dreams of suicide. She vaguely wondered if she was supposed to feel happy now they were cross-fading into reality. She sort of believed she was, a little. Now that she was with Jade. The idea gave her butterflies.

Her eyes hooked onto the ripples of water, the splashing enticing. She grabbed Jade's hand. She wasn't scared anymore.

"Together, remember?" She asked again.

Jade nodded slowly.

Just like her dreams.

A brief wave of happiness washed over her as the wind picked up her hair, pulling her out of her cycle of despair. Cat briefly imagined what she would look like when they found her, the gash on her head pooling with blood. All it would take would be one small step, one tiny leap forward.

For once in her life Cat was in control, and it came with a rush, a burst of energy, a chill. She smiled.

"Yes."


End file.
